This invention relates to a method of attaching two half-cartons to form a dual half-carton structure. More particularly, this invention relates to a method of attaching paperboard half-cartons of cigarette packs, wherein two half-cartons may be secured together, run as a single carton through a standard tax-stamping machine and later separated for sale as individual half-carton units.
Cigarettes are commonly sold in paperboard cartons of ten cigarette packs, each pack containing about twenty to twenty-five cigarettes. Due to the rising costs of cigarettes, it has become desirable to make available to consumers half-cartons of five cigarette packs in addition to the standard ten-pack full cartons.
Standard cigarette cartons contain two parallel rows of five packs each. In each row of the carton, the five packs are typically positioned with their tops facing upward and aligned side-by-side in a 1.times.5 pack configuration. Two such rows form a standard 2.times.5 pack carton. Each 1.times.5 pack row may be packaged separately for sale as a five pack half-carton.
Most states and foreign countries require that tax stamps be affixed to cigarette packs prior to sale. Tax-stamping is typically done at the distributor level, after the cigarette cartons have already been filled with cigarette packs by the manufacturer, temporarily closed and shipped to the distributor. Temporarily closing the cartons may be done in many ways, such as by folding the top flaps of the cartons down over the cigarette boxes and releasably fastening the flaps in the closed position. Automated tax-stamping machines have been developed to plow open the temporarily closed cartons, apply the tax-stamps of that jurisdiction to the tops of the cigarette packs and then reseal the cartons for distribution to retail stores. Such tax-stamping machines are generally commercially available and are well known in the art.
Existing automated tax-stamping machines, however, are geared for simultaneously stamping ten cigarette packs in the standard 2.times.5 pack carton configuration. Accordingly, in order to use existing tax-stamping machines, separately packaged half-cartons must be configured in parallel pairs such that two half-cartons may be sent through a standard tax-stamping machine as a single 2.times.5 pack carton unit.
The two half-cartons must be held together securely and without slipping to ensure that the tax-stamping machine will function properly and that the two half-cartons will not be sheared apart by the tax-stamping machine. In addition, the half-cartons must be easily separable so that each half-carton may be sold by itself at the retail level.
One prior method of packaging two half-cartons for tax-stamping involved inserting two separate half-cartons into a standard 2.times.5 pack full carton container to facilitate tax-stamping on existing full carton tax-stamping equipment. This packaging scheme, however, was carried out primarily by hand and required significant effort at the retail level to separate the two half-cartons from the full carton container for separate sale.
Another prior method for packaging the two half-cartons for tax-stamping involved a 2.times.5 pack full carton that could be separated into two 1.times.5 pack half-cartons by tearing along a perforation. There are many variations of this perforation method, each with its own particular advantage. Still, a method that requires tearing of the half-cartons may not always work properly because separation of the two half-cartons by tearing one from the other, even along perforations, depends on the manual dexterity of the retailer or consumer doing the tearing and could result in misplaced tearing, crushing, folding or detachment of carton walls or flaps, or other deformations of the carton structure.
It is desirable to provide an improved method of packaging cigarette cartons that makes use of existing machinery for tax-stamping of cartons and requires minimal modifications of existing machinery for making half-cartons and for placing cigarette packs into them.
It is also desirable to provide an improved method of packaging two half-cartons of cigarettes so that they may be securely paired together for tax-stamping in a standard tax-stamping machine and later may be easily separated at the retail level to enable the consumer to purchase only a half-carton rather than a full carton.
It is further desirable to provide an improved method of packaging cigarette cartons so that two half-cartons may be cleanly separated at the retail level without crushing, folding, tearing or otherwise deforming any part of the carton.